Roundabout: I will meet you yet again!
Punjab's Amrita Pritam, the first woman writer across all Indian languages to win the Sahitya Akademi Award, is celebrated in a new book titled "Amrita Pritam: The Writer Provocateur." The book, edited by Hina Nandrajog and the late Prem Kumari Srivastava, explores her influential writings and the challenges she faced as a woman in a patriarchal society. It includes select poems, fiction excerpts, and articles by scholars, offering fresh insights into her work. The book also features a conversation with actor Deepti Naval, who played Pritam in a play called "Ek Mulaqat."
Punjab’s own Amrita Pritam took Punjabi, the language she wrote in, to new places with ease and finesse. A poet’s poet, she published her first collection of poems at the age of 13 and went on to pen some 100 books in poetry and prose. When Punjab was torn into two in 1947, she was the first to write a dirge to Partition invoking the Sufi poet Waris Shah, who had written the qissa of Heer, to rise from the grave and address the cries of a million daughters who had suffered the wrath of the great divide on their bodies and souls.
She was the first woman writer, across all Indian languages, to win the coveted Sahitya Akademi Award in 1956. She was also the first to bring the prestigious Bhartiya Jnanpith Award to Punjabi in 1981. A subject of admiration and envy alike as well as misogyny from the macho Punjabi contemporaries, she moved on with a pen in hand and a song of love in her heart to pass from life to legend. A poet, a storyteller, as well as a radio and television anchor and an editor who groomed two generations of Punjabi writers: such was the sweep of her talent.
It gives one joy to hold in hand a mint-fresh book in the international Routledge series on Indian writers in which her writings are evaluated afresh largely by women writers and academics, but with some tributes from her male readers too. The book, edited by eminent academics, Hina Nandrajog and late Prem Kumari Srivastava, who sadly passed away before the volume came out in print, the book is titled “Amrita Pritam: The Writer Provocateur”. Now that you don’t have to run to the dictionary like I did, a writer provocateur is someone who raises issues which lead to discussions, debates and controversies and makes people uncomfortable and provokes them to rethink. Well that is what our free-spirited Amrita was all about in challenging falsehood, discrimination and bigotry.
A tapestry of radiance
Introducing the writings of Amrita to a larger audience, the editors talk about the journey of this daughter of words who was an enigma in the feudal, patriarchal Punjab of undivided India. This girl, with poetry deeply embedded in her soul, did not learn to stitch and sew: “She rather chose to stitch words together to create what she called a ‘chaanan di phulkari’—a tapestry of radiance— a metaphor for a borderless, equal and just world that she envisioned through her formidable literary oeuvre created over a period of seven decades of writing.” They also go on to pertinently point out that she lived and celebrated on her own terms and her literature is a creative expression of her provocative iconoclasm, which receives the stubbornly frozen gaze of her own generation, especially male writers and critics.
So true and this is interestingly to willy-nilly creep, perhaps subconsciously, in the articles included in this book by the “first sex”. The exception is a fine appraisal by her contemporary fiction writer Mohan Bhandari who concedes without any malice: ‘’Amrita is an unparalleled achievement of Punjabi literature. Writing about myths she has herself become one.” Paul Kaur, a Punjabi poet and a serious connoisseur of the writings of Amrita, says, “Amrita had a long and difficult journey as a woman and a writer and the torment meted out by society on both accounts was embedded deep inside her. She often felt that her writings had not been understood adequately, as though they were buried under snow. But she did not despair and had hope from the next generation.”
Her work across genres is neatly divided in the book into different sections and beginning of course with her select poems as should be for it was her poetic self that came to play even in the prose she touched. The first poem that meets the eye is her iconic “Call to Waris Shah”, which touched all hearts in the brutally-divided Punjab. As an aside, Khushwant Singh remarked, this girl wrote fourteen lines that made her immortal. The poem was first published here and then in Lahore. Faiz Ahmad Faiz, the famed poet activist, recalled that he read it in prison and when he came out he found that people kept the poem in their pockets and wept as they read it.
The last poem in this section is the famous yet “I Will Meet You Yet Again”, her swansong dedicated to her partner Imroz.
The romance with the famous Urdu poet and lyricist Sahir Ludhianvi finds mention in an article by Punjabi writer Jang Bahadur Goel in which he recounts their first meeting with Sahir at a mushaira in Preet Nagar near Amritsar, after which began a string of meetings of one poet with another. The mutual interaction between Amrita and Sahir did not turn into a commitment and was to inspire her to write poetry of love with intensity. Yet the goodwill and friendship remained till the end even when she had found a partner in Imroz. One recalls Amrita reminiscing about a check-up with an ayurvedic healer, with Sahir recounting his heart condition and Amrita seeking a remedy for the pain in her knees. Laughing to herself, she mused what beauty and love come to in the late years.
There is a section on the select fiction by the author including excerpts from her novel “Pinjar”, translated as Skeleton by Khushwant Singh, as Chak No:36 (Village No:36) set in the village of her partner Imroz, “Urmi” and “Shah di Kanjari” translated as “The Shah’s Harlot”. Besides, there are articles by scholars which delve deep into studying the works of Amrita in the context of self, desire, love, spirituality, gender and society. There is a lively conversation with actor Deepti Naval with Sukrita Paul Kaur and Rekha Sethi. She recalls how she played the role of the writer in a play called “Ek Mulaqat”. Deepti says ever since her first meeting with Amrita she knew that she would play Amrita one day and she adds, “Her personality was such that one felt drawn to her and her ways”.
This volume deserves bouquets all round and the surprise contribution is by Amrita’s grandson Aman Kwatra titled “Tea with Ammaji”. He fondly recalls having early morning tea and biscuits with her at dawn in their K-25 Hauz Khas home, after which would follow a walk in the nearby park with Ammaji, Babaji Imroz, little sister and pet dogs in tow: “Those were days to remember”.